This exhibition was brought about by a discussion between myself and Cath Gomersall earlier this year on our
common interest in photograms. This simple photographic technique, often taught in introductory photography
courses, produces images by placing objects on photographic paper and exposing it to light. The results seem
more akin to shadows or spectres than photographs.
While the process is simple, the method has been practiced by many notable artists including Man Ray and
Moholy-Nagy. The graphic and distorting characteristics of images it produces are compelling and intriguing.
While all the works in the exhibition have a common origin of being made without a camera, they display a wide
range of different techniques. My images and Karenne Rees, and the works by students from Governor Stirling
Senior High School (a collaborative project led by Cath Gomersall) are photograms. Panizza Allmark and Trinity
Brown have produced scanograms, using a scanner to produce the digital equivalent of a photogram. Cath
Gomersall has made digital collages. Each technique makes use of the capacity of the photograph to preserve
the impressions of objects they have been formed by.

Daniel Nevin October 2008

Dancing around handbags

Panizza Allmark

The handbag serves an important role, not only for its utilitarian features but also as a marker of status as well as
style and conveying the personality of the owner. It is an “accessible accessory” for women (Street 2002, 156).
A handbag is also a symbol of femininity, which carries many hidden lifestyle signs and the trappings of femininity.
Its outer skin on public display suggests aesthetic tastes and fashion trends. But the inside cavity of the handbag is
“a private space, often concealing secrets or evidence of multiple identities” (Street 1999, 97).
It would be deemed an invasion of privacy to rifle through a woman’s handbag without consent. The interior
space is so intimate and personal, and could be considered as an extension of the female body. An example of
this could be seen when women in clubs or parties dance around their handbags in what might be viewed as
ritualistically protecting their contents from prying eyes and hands. Their body may be on public display, but the
intimate contents of their handbags are safely protected. Nevertheless, in our times of heightened security the
bag is surrendered to the cold specular gaze of impersonal officials and their security scanners. My series of
digital scans of handbags attempts to provide an insight into the hidden often somewhat chaotic range of
contents concealed within the handbag’s interior space, as well as suggesting the forensic fascination and specular
gaze directed toward the fetish fashion object.
References: Street, S. (2002). Hitchcockian haberdashery. In Framing Hitchcock: Selected Essays from the Hitchcock
Annual by S. Gottlieb, C. Bookhouse, 147- 158 Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Street, S. (1999). The dresses had told me: Fashion and femininity. In Rear Window. In J. Belton, 91-109,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Good Pictures"

Catherine Gomersall

Digital Collage from 'UK Hair', 'National Geographic' and 'Style'.

"To take a picture is to have interest in things as they are, in the status quo remaining
unchanged (at least for as long as it takes to get a "good" picture), to be in complicity
with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing - including, when
that is the interest, another person's pain or misfortune." - Susan Sontag (1977) On
Photography. Penguin Books.

Water Wars

Karenne Rees

These images are from a series of photograms and scannographs of water pistols.
I have named these images Positive and Negative because thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exactly what they are the negative and the
positive photogram. The images were produced by placing the objects directly onto colour photographic paper
processed and then scanned to produce current size.
Our world is running out of that precious resource water and these images mirror our present and future
predicament. The positive image like a jewel we must have and the negative image full of what seems like blood.

Photogrammer

Daniel Nevin

Making photographs without a camera might seem to be a strange idea as photographic materials are designed to
be used with a camera. Doing away with the camera seems somehow to be skipping a key step!
Nevertheless I find one of the ways to understand things is to look at their individual components, a kind of
dissection (in this case of the photograph) to see what can be uncovered. I enjoy the process of play and
experimentation that the photogram involves. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how a particular image will appear when I
commence making it so that element of chance and revelation is very enjoyable.
To see a photogram is to view something quite different to seeing the object itself. What we see is the shadow
of the object, an impression that is left by something that is taken away. I think this is what gives photograms
their spectral quality, particularly when they are made from clothing. When we view it we are seeing something
that has gone, an absence made explicit.
The photogram also appears to mimic the action of memory and dreams, in their imperfect, inverted and
confused re-presentation of things.

Lizzi Phillips

My work is intuitive, vigorous in structure and abstract in nature. Translating through drawing design elements
from the urban space into abstract landscape design is the language that I use to express my emotional response
to the city streetscape. These works are made in response to the contrast of the landscape of the city using
urban materials and forms. My style involves distinguishing aspects of the simplicity of urban motifs by abstracting
the textural elements then applying the designs using materials from the urban space, such as paper collage,
bitumen, glass, steel, spray paint an ink to build layers and depth, manipulating the works with a photocopier to
finally create photograms that are unique expressions of our contemporary landscape.

Trinity Brown

"The Medium is the Message" Marshall McLuhan

This work capitalises on the parallels between digital technology and human cognition highlight the limitations of
both. We are all confined by our ability to make sense of our surroundings just as the digital scanner use to take
these images was inadequate to absorb any of the visual information outside it's range of focus or ability to
illuminate. The resulting self-portraits have a mysterious quality which speak of an internal head space.

Governor Stirlingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Girls

Year 11 TEE ART

This group of young high school art students have undertaken a 10 week project to create expressive artworks
that demonstrate a sense of purpose and understanding of the relationship among form, materials, techniques
and subject matter to design a picture using drawing on transparent, translucent and opaque papers to build the
layers of the photogram. These drawings were then scanned and transferred into Photoshop where they
undertook a number of processes to manipulate, transform and discard sections of the original drawings to put
onto acetate and use in their photogram. In the darkroom process the works use a variety of objects for the
self-symbolic aspect to build the layers of their final photogram artwork. As a result the students have each
produced a unique and individual artwork that express and explore the photogram process in a highly
sophisticated manner whilst still maintaining the traditional process of photograming.
Catherine Gomersall gave an artist talk and ran a workshop to facilitate this process, leading to the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;
involvement in this exhibition.
Students: Teresa Hall, Shannon Linton, Samantha Tully, Madeson Tabanao, Krystal Davies, Jessica Chambers,
Aneta Szczucki, Alexandra Wilson, Zoe Baldock, Rhiannon Broome, Aimee Wainwright.

Camera Obscura

Darryn Ansted

The camera obscura is an effect created through the hole in the wall of a darkened room. Light reflecting off
objects passes through the hole onto the rear wall of the room. The rays of light create an inverted image of the
object. Although this phenomenon was prototypical of photography it was also instrumental in the execution of
paintings at various stages in its history in Western Europe. For this exhibition the apparatus is again tested for
its use in representational painting as a rendering will be produced from the projected image.
Darryn Ansted is currently completing a PhD on Gerhard Richter through the University of Western Australia.